I'm always interested to know how far Tory apologists will defend the government? At what point would you say "mmm, this is going a bit too far"?

to
When the democratic will of the people is applied - we voted for Brexit, how long did it take to make any progress and why? The civil service is supposed to support the government of the day not work against it. This is not an isolated incident - it happened under Labour - the difference is this has come to light in the past senior civil servants have either been retired or moved. I think you know this type of thing happens in every organisation of size - its not a huge deal.

This isn't an isolated incident though and on the back of Javid's resignation (where he was also scathing about how the Tory machine was trying to seize additional powers), there does appear to be a fair amount of smoke with this particular fire.
Is it just me or, does it appear that Johnson his running his office in much the same way as Trump is running the States.

What is without doubt is that Patel is severely ruffling feathers and I think we should ask why her man has sacrificed a huge payout, potentially jeopardised his pension and felt the need to go very public over this.

To suggest that "you know this type of thing happens in every organisation of size" is like blind acceptance that there is nothing extraordinary going on.
I would ask you, when was the last time you saw this happen to the "backroom" staff at no 10 ?

https://www.facebook.com/BestForBritain ... tn__=EHH-R I think this tells you everything you need to know about Boris, Cummings and the government advisers. So Sal how many lives are worth the economy not suffering too much . 50k. 100k. 1million. Don’t worry everyone who needs grandparents let them die for the sake of saving the rich extra money. Plus you get their inheritance, free up the housing market, solve the social care crisis and save money on pensions. Someone in your family with diabetes, a weak immune system , cancer breathing difficulties . Don’t worry a few thousand of them dying for the sake of the economy is fine. Children got asthma don’t worry you can get rid of the little buggers just think how much better you will be after Brexit when the economy is growing again .

https://www.facebook.com/BestForBritain ... tn__=EHH-R I think this tells you everything you need to know about Boris, Cummings and the government advisers. So Sal how many lives are worth the economy not suffering too much . 50k. 100k. 1million. Don’t worry everyone who needs grandparents let them die for the sake of saving the rich extra money. Plus you get their inheritance, free up the housing market, solve the social care crisis and save money on pensions. Someone in your family with diabetes, a weak immune system , cancer breathing difficulties . Don’t worry a few thousand of them dying for the sake of the economy is fine. Children got asthma don’t worry you can get rid of the little buggers just think how much better you will be after Brexit when the economy is growing again .

The difference with the Boris government, and any other, including Theresa May's government, is that clashes are coming over the government's desire to do things that are outside the law.

The civil service is obliged to ensure that the government's actions are within the law - it is literally in the civil service code and the duty of senior civil servants to uphold. When I was in government I remember the amount of time I'd be in lengthy meetings with lawyers about whether we had the vires to do the kind of legislation we were proposing. Often this would be in the context of primary and secondary legislation. The primary legislation - in a Bill the government had previously passed, would say something like the Government will solve X problem by introducing a legal body with enforcement powers. The secondary legislation that would come later would involve writing what that legal body could do and what were its enforcement powers. Now often - in all good faith and innocence - officials would sit down with a Minister who would be keen to sort out problem X, and would say lets really nail this now and send a strong message, so you'd make this legal body strong with strong enforcement powers. Then the lawyers would get involved and start pointing out that those enforcement powers you were introducing might be overreach on behalf of the government, in terms of the boundaries of what was supposed to be allowed by the primary legislation. If we pushed ahead anyway with something dicey, it would inevitably be in the House of Lords, where there are a lot of long standing experienced politicians with strong legal backgrounds, who would pick up the problems and on a subsequent reading we would have iterated the legislation to a point where it would be robust to any legal challenge (ie judicial review).

The reason you have this is to uphold a very strong principle in the British system of government. The law protects the citizens from the overreach of the powers of the state. For centuries it has been the Conservatives who were the strongest guardians of this, as they feared that it would be a left wing government who would be more likely to use the overreach of government power in to individuals' private lives.

The big difference with the Johnson/Cummings government, is that their approach is that the civil service and the courts are some kind of traitorous enemy trying to stand in the way of what they want to do (using government's powers) and so they want to cut out civil servants who are doing their jobs by telling them they need to act within the constraints of the law, and they want to attack the judiciary and limit the ability of citizens to use the law to constrain the government from overreaching their powers.

As well as the bullying issue with Priti Patel one of the charges against her coming from the civil service is that she has been angry because she's been trying to act outside the law. It is literally their duty to tell her she can't do that. She obviously has this wild west approach to government because that is what got her sacked by Theresa May in DfID when she went off meeting the Israelis to negotiate using aid money to fund the Israeli Defence Force for its 'humanitarian' (surely a euphemism) work in Gaza, which was not official government business but her own private sideline work.

Now at the moment, riding a wave of populism, this Tory government may get its way and start a new precedent in government where instead of having these long standing Oxford educated white male Sir Humphries, the government of the day gets to appoint whoever it wants in that role and gets to constrain the powers of the courts.

But they are also laying the ground for future Labour governments, because the political cycle always turns at some point. If the offspring of the Corbyn cult take power in a decade or so, a lot of conservatives would react with concern that the constraints of the Sir Humphries and the courts are no longer there. What if a Corbynista Labour PM imposes henchmen union thugs as Permanent Secretaries to ensure that the civil service is bullied in to carrying out their agenda whatever the law says (Labour bullying like Patel? surely not). Then they might want to overreach governments' powers in areas like compulsory purchase in order to nationalise things, and businesses/individuals would rightly want to exercise their right to use judicial review and the law to prevent government from overreaching in their lives. But what if those powers have been weakened by this Tory government, so Labour is able to force those things through.

That's when some people who are crowing in support of Boris and Cummings now will look back and say, you know what maybe unwinding centuries of tradition about the constraints of the power of government over the citizens wasn't such a smart move was it.

So this Rutnam guy is not part of the Oxbridge intellectual SAS elite?



Tbf to the Civil Service, the Cameron Conservative Government didn’t ask/allow them to do any prep and the May Conservative Government couldn’t pass its Brexit legislation. Once the Johnson whatever-it-is Government agreed to the version of the deal with a customs border in the Irish Sea and won a sizeable majority, it has all moved pretty swiftly.

Because of the complexity of Brexit and the fact that the incoming Ministers did not have a plan for Brexit, they campaigned for the general vague idea of Brexit and then thought they'd work it out after.

I guess if Corbyn had got in, he'd have said to the civil service "deliver free broadband for everyone, its the will of the people" and then when the civil service started explaining the complexity of it, and Ministers started to shy away from the unfortunate trade offs they hadn't considered, things would have got delayed, we'd be 3 years down the line and still no free broadband, and the hard left would be saying it was because of the obstructive civil service.

With Brexit, a lot of the problem in the years 2016-19 was that Ministers had been sold various myths during the referendum about the UK holding "all the cards" and a lot of them came in thinking basically we could leave the EU but negotiate away all the inconveniences that would involve because of our super strong position. Hence Theresa May's government was trying to simultaneously issue strict red lines on freedom of movement, regulatory alignment and jurisdiction of the European courts and also talk about "comprehensive, ambitious, deep" relationship and all these various terms.

The EU were very matter-of-fact, as they always are in trade deals with other countries: if you want those red lines, this is the most we give you, we're willing to offer you more, just ditch those red lines.

May's government thought they could push the EU in to giving away more but they couldn't. Of course part of this got blamed on a conspiracy of Olly Robbins being in league with the EU.

So then Boris came in and he's basically realised the situation which is why he is being much more realistic about what is available. When he wanted to solve the "Irish backstop" issue, he defaulted to the original EU idea of a border between NI and mainland GB. Back in the original talks, the EU had pushed for that and May had pushed against it saying no UK PM could accept a trade border inside British territory, so she compromised by bringing the entire UK inside a large degree of regulatory and customs alignment. Boris didn't want that, the EU said ok so its back to the border down the Irish sea, and unlike May, Boris was willing to compromise.

But Boris has also realised that the UK isn't going to negotiate special favours. He might sideline Olly Robbins but the hard truth is, the UK has no experienced trade negotiators! We haven't done trade negotiations for years. The main negotiation strategy tried in the Theresa May era was "divide and rule" to try and talk to individual member states bilaterally and play them off against the Commission, but the member states didn't go along with that, they knew that the EU's hand is stronger when they act as a block.

So all this talk now about "Australia style partnership", which is basically no deal, is Boris and his government realising that there will be no special favours and the UK will just have to deal with the fall out.

The unavoidable truth of that, is that it is going to introduce a lot of extra costs and conveniences that consumers and businesses will not like. They will no doubt try a strategy of blame on the civil service/BBC/EU/immigrants/wokeness but they are the ones in charge who will face hard questions from people saying, since Boris's government got in I'm facing a higher grocery bill - why? And businesses saying, I operate on tight margins, I can't afford these extra costs.

With Corbyn and the hard left of Labour subsiding, a Starmer-led Opposition will be more credible and they will start to see elements of the old Blair coalition ebbing back to them, as well as the youth vote, so Boris' seemingly impregnable position now will go in to decline.

A Conservative commentator suggested it was because of her past discretions that she was considered suitable for the job. They are working to a plan with regards the civil service and she is more than happy to follow directions. They know that if it gets to close to Johnson or Cummings then she can be replaced quite easily because of her somewhat checkered history.

It's an interesting exercise in hypocrisy, when one compares and contrasts the reaction of the MSM and right wing commentators to allegations of bullying against John Bercow, to those against Priti Patel; on the one hand, John Bercow is an evil, remainy bully - on the other, the civil service are snowflakes who can't tolerate being 'managed.'

Either way up, Priti Patel is as vacant as a vandalised loo - and is being used as a patsy to get shot of a senior civil servant who seems to be a barrier to the Cummings plan of acting outside the law to get your agenda pushed through; she is entirely expendable.

Example - on Radio 5 Live this morning, Nicky Campbell to Liz Truss (because they won't go on Radio 4): "Priti Patel is coming in for some criticism for bullying - how much of this is driven by racism and misogyny?" I despair.

That's true but it also goes the other way too.

How many people liked Bercow and turned a blind eye to the accusations of bullying, but have now jumped straight on on Priti Patel.